Eric R. Danton | Sound Checkhttp://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/
All the rock you need.enCopyright 2011Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:59:38 -0400http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specificationSound Check blog has relocatedAs part of an effort to collect the Courant's music coverage in one place, Sound Check entries, music stories and CD and concert reviews will henceforth appear right here.

If you follow this blog via RSS feed, you'll need to add the new address (again, it's right here) to continue getting updates. Although all the entries on this blog will stay up, there won't be any new ones after today.

Thank you to everyone who has stopped by over the past few years to read and comment. See you in the new place! ]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/sound-check-blog-has-relocated.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/sound-check-blog-has-relocated.htmlFri, 21 Jan 2011 09:59:38 -0400Ra Ra Riot drummer Gabriel Duquette announces departure

Two and a half years after taking over drumming duties for Ra Ra Riot, West Hartford native Gabriel Duquette is leaving the band. Duquette, whose final appearance with Ra Ra Riot comes Thursday on "Jimmy Kimmel Live," played on the band's 2010 LP "The Orchard," and on a pair of EPs: 2009's "Can You Tell" and last year's "Boy."

"We can't thank him enough for the time he spent with us, the bountiful hysterical memories, and we wish him all the best," Ra Ra Riot wrote in a message on the band's website.

Duquette thanked the band's fans "for helping me feel famous for a short while," and the other members of Ra Ra Riot for having "unwittingly helped me find my fashion sense."

"I will miss eating big meals together and saying weird things to make them laugh uncomfortably," he wrote beneath the band's statement. "My two favorite memories are Beyonce and Jay-Z in the audience at Coachella and dangling my feet in a stream at Yellowstone."

Drummer Kenny Barnard joins the band on tour, while Duquette plans to return to West Hartford, where he'll teach drum lessons and "prepare for the collapse of industrial civilization."

Ra Ra Riot's original drummer, John Pike, drowned after a party in Massachusetts while on tour in 2007. ]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/ra-ra-riot-gabriel-duquette.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/ra-ra-riot-gabriel-duquette.htmlIndie RockGabriel DuquettenewsRa Ra RiotTue, 18 Jan 2011 16:59:50 -0400Tix for Wilco's Solid Sound Festival go on sale FridayTickets go on sale Friday, Jan. 21, at 11 a.m. for Wilco's second Solid Sound Festival, happening June 24-26 at Mass MoCA in North Adams, Mass.

The lineup is yet to come, but expect a pair of headline performances from Wilco. This year's festival also includes a "comedy cabaret" hosted by John Hodgman, a Euclid Records pop-up store (Wilco singer Jeff Tweedy once worked at the first-rate St. Louis music store, where the band's manager, Tony Margherita, was his boss), "a wide array of all-ages programming" and a Solid Sound campground.

The cost is $99.50 for a limited number of three-day "early worm" passes (the regular price is $124), or $65 for Friday, $78 for Saturday and $65 for Sunday. Buy tickets via SolidSoundFestival.com, massmoca.org or the Mass MoCA box office.

Also: don't wait to book accommodations. Lodgings in the North Adams area are filling up fast, and more than a few places require an odious three-night minimum.

Wilco and Mavis Staples headlined last year's inaugural festival, which also included performances by Avi Buffalo, Mountain Man, the Baseball Project and various Wilco side projects. ]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/solid-sound-festival-tickets.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/solid-sound-festival-tickets.htmlIndie RockLive MusicSon Volt/Wilco/Uncle TupeloMass MoCAnewsSolid SoundTue, 18 Jan 2011 13:21:18 -0400CD Review: 'The King is Dead' by the DecemberistsAfter a series of increasingly complex albums, the Decemberists step away from ornate chamber-pop trappings on their latest, an album with no harpsichord, no hurdy-gurdy and barely any bouzouki.

In fact, "The King is Dead" (Capitol) is startlingly straightforward, featuring 10 songs steeped more in American roots music than the English folk (and, on 2008's "Hazards of Love," prog) traditions that leader Colin Meloy has more often drawn from over the past decade. (Listen to the album here.)

The Portland, Ore., band's sixth album is full of acoustic guitars, mournful pedal steel licks and bursts of harmonica and violin. There are also lovely vocal harmonies, many of which come from Americana singer Gillian Welch. Nobody sings close harmony like Welch, and her voice hews to Meloy's as closely as the backside of a shadow on seven songs, starting with opener "Don't Carry It All."

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http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/decemberists-king-is-dead-review.htmlCD ReviewsCD ReviewsThe DecemberistsTue, 18 Jan 2011 08:00:22 -0400Electric Jellyfish's Michael Beach to release 7-inch on CT labelTwin Lakes Records today announced the Feb. 8 release of Michael Beach's first single since the Australian singer and songwriter relocated last year from Melbourne to San Francisco.Beach -- who released a handful of EPs as part of the trio Electric Jellyfish and a 2008 solo LP, "Blood Courses" -- teamed with co-producer Raymond Raposa, of Castanets, on "A Horse" b/w "The Exhilarating Rise."

The former is a spare, rambling song that finds Beach singing quietly over a dimly gleaming electric guitar part and an elemental beat. The latter has a stronger pulse, layering overdriven guitars over droning bass in an arrangement that rises and falls in a way that recalls the movement of early Velvet Underground tunes.

Preorder the songs on 7-inch vinyl here, or download them right now here. ]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/michael-beach-a-horse-single.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/michael-beach-a-horse-single.htmlIndie RockLocal ScenenewsTwin Lakes RecordsMon, 17 Jan 2011 12:52:35 -0400CD Review: 'Apple Mountain' by the Mountain MoversNew Haven band the Mountain Movers showed moderate levels of ambition on the band's first two albums, which were low-key collections of charming, ramshackle rock songs.

The group -- another outlet for Dan Greene, co-founder of New Haven's long-running, big-in-England indie-pop group, the Butterflies of Love -- favored meandering, occasionally dissonant guitar parts, backed with keyboards and held together by unassuming bass and loose drums.

Greene and Movers partner Rick Omonte on bass and other instruments (joined on this album by drummer John Miller and since replaced by Kryssi Battalene, pictured above) ratchet up the ambition, and the weirdness, on the Mountain Movers' latest.

"Apple Mountain," released on the band's own Car Crash Avoiders label, is psychedelic-folk concept album occupying three LP sides (or one 53-minute CD, which comes packaged with the vinyl, along with a booklet of lyrics and Greene's hand-drawn artwork).

The outing starts April 8 in Lansing, Mich., heads west to California and then across the South before wrapping up May 7 in Raleigh, N.C.

Make Do and Mend last year released its full-length debut, "End Measured Mile," on Panic/Paper + Plastik. The band also plays a handful of shows this month, including a gig opening for Less Than Jake Jan. 28 at the Webster Theatre in Hartford.]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/make-do-and-mend-tour.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/make-do-and-mend-tour.htmlIndie RockLocal SceneMake Do and MendnewsThu, 13 Jan 2011 13:58:06 -0400February Records marks 1st anniversary with free compilationFebruary Records is giving away a compilation of 19 songs by bands on its roster.The collection features a song from every band that has released music on February Records, including the Cavemen Go, the Inclined Plane and the Fictional West. Some of the songs are previously unreleased, including selections by Women's Basketball, the Tyler Trudeau Attempt and Secret Charisma, Dexter Poindexter, Two If By Sea and Bourgeois Heroes,

There are also five songs from acts with impending 2011 releases on February, which has demonstrated impressive taste in tracking down promising bands from Connecticut and, increasingly, beyond.

"One Year of Original Music from February Records" is available here for free. ]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/february-records-compilation.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/february-records-compilation.htmlIndie RockLocal SceneFebruary Recordsfree musicnewsTue, 11 Jan 2011 11:25:33 -0400Janet Jackson plays Mohegan Sun in March

She's apparently downsizing to smaller venues in other cities, but Janet Jackson plans a return March 16 to Mohegan Sun Arena with her "Number Ones, Up Close and Personal World Tour." Tickets go on sale Friday at 10 a.m. for $70 and $50.

Jackson was last scheduled to play Mohegan in October 2008, a show she canceled (along with several others) due to "migraine-induced vertigo" that led to her hospitalization.

This tour belatedly accompanies Jackson's 2009 album "Number Ones," a collection of her 35 No. 1 hit singles. According to a press release from Mohegan, she'll perform each of her 35 chart toppers as part of a 35-date tour, dedicating a song to each city where she performs.

Jackson next month releases a self-help book, "True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself." It's due Feb. 8 ]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/janet-jackson-mohegan-sun-march-16.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/janet-jackson-mohegan-sun-march-16.htmlLive MusicR&BJanet JacksonMohegan SunnewsMon, 10 Jan 2011 16:15:37 -0400Track review: 'Hold It Against Me' by Britney SpearsRobyn she's not. For that matter, she's not much for self-reinvention, either. Ultimately, Britney is Britney, and though that has come to mean a smeared-lipstick pastiche of trailer-park antics and diminishing creative returns, Britney Spears is apparently impervious to what, for anyone else, would be a significant amount of self-consciousness.

That mindset extends to her new single, the Dr. Luke/Max Martin joint "Hold it Against Me," which doesn't imply a double-entendre so much as scream it directly into your ear. (Listen here.)

Over the sort of hammering rhythm more commonly found in adult movies, Spears sings in her gulping, breathy voice a version of a hoary pick-up line: "If I said I want your body now/Would you hold it against me?"

Yes, and no?

There's the obligatory spoken-word part in the middle, followed by a grunting synthesizer breakdown that leads back into a prismatic outro chorus.

It's catchy, sure, but Spears sounds as robotic as the synthesizers. There's no human element, nothing playful or whimsical -- just a relentless mechanical beat with all the sex appeal of a tool and die shop.

The song is from Spears' forthcoming, still-untitled seventh album, due in March.]]>http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/britney-spears-hold-it-against-me.html
http://blogs.courant.com/eric_danton_sound_check/2011/01/britney-spears-hold-it-against-me.htmlBritney SpearsElectronic MusicBritney SpearsnewsMon, 10 Jan 2011 12:57:32 -0400CD Review: The Backyard Committee's self-titled debutMusical ability is easy enough to spot, but it can be tricky trying to pinpoint the less tangible qualities a player brings to a band. That said, Bridgeport roots-rockers the Alternate Routes would be a lesser group without guitarist Mike Sembos.

Sembos, who plays a supporting role in the band founded by Eric Donnelly and Tim Warren, is fully in charge of the Backyard Committee, a New Haven-based side project with songs he spent several years chipping away at before releasing them on a self-titled collection available online for free.

The guitarist and singer displays a knack for crafting solid pop songs shot through with bits of folk and country, for a warm, pleasingly worn-in sound (due, in part, to the ministrations of Greg Giorgio, who mastered the album at Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport).

Even in the midst of all that dark, though, Cash shined a light as she made heartache transcendent and sifted through memories in her songs. She excels at covering distances, be they physical or emotional, and her songs frequently brim with wistful yearning.

Performing as a duo with husband John Leventhal on guitar, she drew equally from her own catalog and from "The List," her 2009 album of covers drawn from a list of essential country tunes her father, Johnny Cash, wrote down for her when she was 18.

Sales of digital albums jumped 13 percent to 86.3 million, and sales of digital tracks increased 1 percent to 1.172 billion. In total, digital sales accounted for 46 percent of all music sold in 2010.

By contrast, album sales took a pounding, falling off by 9.1 percent to 443 million, though vinyl sales increased again, to 2.8 million -- a 14 percent jump over 2009. (Also, Nielsen reports, although vinyl sales account for just 1 percent of overall music sold, consumers bought 71 percent of their LPs at independent record stores.)

Rap was the only genre that grew in sales in 2010, with a 3 percent increase to 27 million. New Age, Latin, Jazz, Classical and Alternative each fell by more than 20 percent, with New Age taking the biggest hit percentage-wise, falling 29 percent to 1.6 million -- less than half what Eminem sold by himself.